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Saturday, 26 March 2011

The lovely scarf that I was so proud of crashed and burned off the loom last Thursday when I took it off and realised it had gaps in amongst the weft, sob sob. I have thrown this problem into the UK Weavers group forum on Ravelry and received some very good advice. It would seem that the problem was poor tension. This occurred during warping. Warping alone can be very complicated in that it is difficult to maintain correct tension when winding on and trying to hold the warp in one hand and wind on with the other.

Now I have been advised that to maintain good tension when warping alone I can tie some weights onto the warp and that will maintain the tension whilst I am winding on. Now collecting milk bottles for the next project.

If you are stuck on tips for weaving, the books are good but there is nothing like receiving help from people who have been there and made the same mistakes. Weaving lessons are not an option for me as I dont have the money to spare to pay for them at this time in my life. But free advice is brilliant on this group.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Feeling rather ashamed here of not having posted for ages. No excuses other than life taking over as usual. I cant believe its nearly a year since I started this blog. The days seem to merge one into another.

I am glad to see Spring is coming to Berrow again, the lovely flowers throughout the village are testimony to that and my beautiful Magnolia tree is out in blossom once again.

I am currently weaving a scarf on the Julia loom, using a four shaft, straight twill threading, with a hand dyed tencel warp and a hand dyed tencel and merino weft. The merino yarn is laceweight and was produced at Coldharbour Mill in Devon although I understand that they no longer have their mill shop on site due to flooding, it is being moved to Lynton on Exmoor, which is a shame as that is rather far for me to drive so hopefully they will post yarn if I wish to purchase any.

The hand dyed tencel came from Yarnstopia on Etsy and is gorgeous. I have to admit that the tencel yarn does tend to wear as a warp yarn, perhaps rayon or silk would have been better. I am using four picks of hand dyed tencel, and four picks of hand dyed merino. It seems to be working quite well and I am fairly pleased with the results so far. Once its off the loom and washed then I can see how successful it has been.

I warped this up at 12 epi using a 12 dent reed.

On the Minstrel wheel is some fairly coarse wool fleece that is a Border Leicester/Suffolk cross and was purchased locally. I do seem to have quite a bit of this lurking in the garage, but I'm not confessing to anyone else about this.

This will be spun up for warp yarn and I am putting some extra twist into this to give it the strength it will need for warp. I shall thread this up at 8epi using an 8 dent reed.

Here is one of the completed hanks.

Then I will spin up some more with less twist for the weft. I hope to hand dye some of the yarn to make cushion covers. I am going to experiment with some drafts found on Handweaving.net and see how these come out. If the wool is successful for warp yarn then I may spin up some more and have another go at doublewidth weaving.

A little while ago I purchased Jennifer Moore's book on doubleweave. Its a fascinating read and I did have one attempt at weaving a doublewidth throw in aran weight yarns. It was amazing to watch the cloth grow and to see it bind together at one side but unfortunatley I did have quite a few skipped threads which meant that it didnt turn out to be very attractive. I think a finer yarn may work better next time.

So thats all for today, and a final thought there are some great groups on Ravelry and some of the members of the UK weavers group have been amazingly patient with some odd questions I have put to them lately so dont be downhearted if your weaving goes astray or even if you just want to ask questions about it, free to join and good company, who could ask for more.